“Stupid whale,” came through one tweet after another this morning. Twitter, the social networking site which is being increasingly relied on by self storage operators as a marketing and communication tool, was overcapacity. Users who tried to access the site were treated to a “fail whale,” an image of Twitter’s symbolic whale, being carried by eight tiny orange birds, instead. The company disabled some of its features, such as Twitter Search, hovercards, photo uploads, web sidebar data, and RSS feeds this morning in order to allow some traffic onto the site. Some prognosticators argued that Twitter had been overloaded by post-election tweets. But if a few elections were enough to disable Twitter, will Twitter survive the upcoming World Cup? [More]

“Roger the Alien,” a member of Inside Self-Storage’s trademark online forum, Self-Storage Talk, has posted a request for self storage operators all over the country: come up with a brilliant slogan to put on a billboard.

“Through a bit of finagling,” Roger wrote in a May 26 Self-Storage Talk post, “one of my properties has recently come upon a billboard to use for advertising purposes...I humbly turn to you, the folks of SST, for some ideas.” [More]

June is National Family Month, and according to the National Association of Wedding Ministers, it is also the month when couples are most likely to start their families by getting married. The average couple spends 16 months engaged and seven to 12 months planning the wedding, which typically costs around $22,000. After putting all that money and work into the wedding, most brides are eager to store photos, videos, and keepsakes that will help them to remember the special day. [More]

If you’ve ever seen a mother killdeer nesting on the ground, you know that they are hard to see. Killdeer blend into their surroundings so well that you might not see a nesting killdeer until you were about to step on her -- or drive over her. Killdeer are famous for nesting in people’s driveways and near roads.

This year, a mother killdeer decided to nest on the grounds of American Self Storage Redding, of Redding, California. She found a rocky area of ground not far from a stretch of pavement. Killdeer usually only sit on their eggs for 22 to 28 days, so the manager of American Self Storage Redding, Brett Rohde, decided it would be no bother to protect the nest. American Self Storage tenant John Mort, of John’s Machine & Welding, donated two orange cones to alert drivers not to come too close to the mother killdeer. [More]

For the Dogs, a dog rescue group in Boardman, Ohio, will host a sale to benefit rescued dogs at noon on Sunday, July 18, at Shepherd Self Storage. Money raised in the sale, called “Junk in Your Trunk,” will be used to rescue dogs from local pounds and to help care for rescued dogs. [More]

The biggest danger most people associate with moving is the likelihood of a strained back or sore muscles. But health news this week is reminding us that if young children are around, it is wise to be especially careful while packing or unpacking electronic gadgets that might contain lithium batteries.

Lithium batteries, which look like buttons, are used to provide power for everything from television remote controls to singing electronic greeting cards. It is very important to keep electronic gadgets -- especially remote controls -- away from children. If parents rely on television to entertain children while they pack or move, they must make sure that children are not left alone with a remote control. Even a toddler can remove the button battery from a television remote -- with disastrous or fatal consequences. [More]

Lexington Insurance Company announced this week that it is adding a new line of insurance specifically tailored to the needs of self storage companies. The new program will be called the Self Storage Facilities Program, and will be administered by All Risks, Ltd. [More]

Challenged by his school to come up with a community service project, New Jersey teenager Brian Honick of St. Augustine College Preparatory School thought of shoes. He decided to try to collect a thousand pairs. Cynthia Vogt, the manager of Premier Self Storage of Egg Harbor Township, offered a unit for shoe storage. And Shoes 2 Share International, a nonprofit organization specializing in distributing shoes to the needy, offered to take the shoes, clean them, and distribute them to Haitian adults and children through Operation THERE (The Haitian Earthquake Relief Effort). [More]

Had the producers of The Tonight Show opted to store the show’s wardrobes in self storage they could have had their pick of security features offered by self storage facilities near Universal Studios in Burbank where the show is filmed. There are at least nine self storage facilities near the studio, including Kiss Keep It Self Storage and A-1 Self Storage, which are less than one mile away. Self storage facilities fit two of The Tonight Show’s needs nicely. First, self storage companies maintain customer confidentiality -- self storage operators do not tell anyone who rents units at a facility. Second, self storage facilities are secure. These days, most self storage facilities have 24-hour security camera surveillance and security fences. Many also offer biometric security features.

Unfortunately, the Tonight Show did not store its wardrobes in a self storage facility. Instead, it rented space in a warehouse that does not seem to have the state-of-the-art security devices that are standard in the self storage industry. It is unfortunate that the show did not have the benefit of security fences, cameras, and the like, because on Monday a Tonight Show employee discovered that the show’s chosen storage facility had been burglarized. [More]

In September of 2008, Hewlett-Packard (HP) took over information technology (IT) provider Electronic Data Systems, and then proceeded to cut 24,600 jobs. Today HP announced that it will be cutting about 9,000 more. Lately, technology firms in Silicon Valley have starting recruiting more aggressively again. But will there be enough technology jobs in the Valley for the 9,000 Hewlett-Packard employees that will be laid off over the next several years?

HP says that it will also be adding a total of 6,000 jobs to its sales and delivery teams, but the 9,000 laid-off employees will be from IT. The IT jobs will disappear as HP automates more of the services that it provides to clients. Some technology companies in the area, such as Google, Intel, and Cisco are adding jobs. But analysts say that many technology jobs are starting to migrate to other cities -- and laid-off technology workers are beginning to follow. [More]